Davis v. Coakley, No. 14-2306 (1st Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseIn 1998, Jason Davis received a punitive damages award in a federal civil rights action that he brought against six state employees, who were held responsible for restraining and beating him in a state mental hospital. In 2009, Joshua Messier was killed while being restrained by multiple corrections officers. The personal representative of Messier’s estate brought suit against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and others. The Messier case settled, resulting in the payment of $2 million from Massachusetts. In 2014, Appellant, in his capacity as the personal representative of Davis’s estate, filed a complaint in the district court alleging that former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and former Attorney General Martha Coakley violated the Davis estate’s due process and equal protection rights by agreeing to settle the Messier case while, at the same time, refusing to pay for the outstanding punitive damages award owed to the Davis estate. The district court granted Patrick and Coakley’s motion to dismiss. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that Appellant’s due process and equal protection arguments were without merit.
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